1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a case-equipped mechanism device in which part of mechanism parts is accommodated in the case. For example, the present disclosure relates to a vehicle-use lever device that uses a holder attached to a steering column or the like to hold a case in which a lever support body that swingably supports an operating lever is accommodated.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many passenger cars come with a lever device disposed in the vicinity of a steering wheel, the lever device being used as a mechanism device that operates the direction indicators, the headlights, the windshield wiper, and the like. A general lever device can swing the operating lever in two directions. For example, the vertical motion of the operating lever is detected as an operation for operating the direction indicators, and the fore-aft motion is detected as an operation for, for example, operating the headlight beams or the windshield wiper. As the swinging mechanism of this type of operating lever, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2011-192392 describes a lever operating device that includes a movable support member that swingably supports the base of an operating lever and also includes a housing that swingably supports the movable support member. The operating lever is swingable with respect to the movable support member in a first operation plane and is also swingable with respect to the housing in a second operation plane perpendicular to the first operation plane.
In the lever operating device described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2011-192392 above, the housing is divided into two bodies, an upper case and a lower case. To attach the spindle of the movable support member to an axis retaining cutout in the housing, the housing needs to be structured so that it can be disassembled in this way. The housing is secured to a holder, in a prescribed shape, of the steering column. When the lever is operated, therefore, a strong force is applied to the axis retaining cutout, which supports the movable support member. This requires the housing to be highly rigid. With the lever operating device described above, the upper case and lower case are combined by causing the fasteners of the lower case to snap into engaging holes in the upper case. If higher strength is required than in snap engagement in which elasticity is used, additional measures such as, for example, securing the two cases together with screws are generally taken. However, the way in which additional measures such as screwing are taken is problematic in that the number of parts is increased and person-hours in assembling are increased.